Carl Hagenbeck's Empire of Entertainments.

Carl Hagenbeck's Empire Of Entertainments

Eric Ames

University of Washington Press

PO Box 50096, Seattle, WA 98145-5096

www.washington.edu/uwpress

9780295988337, $35.00, www.amazon.com

Carl Hagenbeck was to 19th Century European popular entertainment what Walt Disney and P.T. Barnum were to America in later years. Hagenbeck was a well-known animal trader and ethnographic showman who, like Barnum, charged admission to a fascinated public of his collections of people, animals and artifacts drawn from all over the world. His collections culminated in his 1907 opening of Tierpark (near Hamburge, Germany) featuring the creation of exotic environments inhabited by both humans and animals. In "Carl Hagenbeck's Empire Of Entertainments", Eric Ames (Assistant Professor of German, University of Washington) has written and compiled a seminal biographical work that provides a historical perspective and framework for Hagenbeck's myriad enterprises in the context of European colonialism and an emerging globalization; what we would today describe as ethnography and anthropology; the popularity of zoological gardens and international expositions; the paradoxes of museum culture and visual spectacle; the phenomena of consumerism and immersive entertainments with respect to such public entertainments that ranged from Wild West Shows to theme parks to world fairs. Occasionally illustrated with black-and-white period photographs, "Carl Hagenbeck's Empire Of Entertainments" is an impressive and seminal scholarship making it strongly recommended for academic library 19th & 20th Century Popular Culture Studies reference collections and supplemental reading lists.